Instructor: Melissa Carey, of Lafayette, who is studying yoga at Naropa University. She has been doing yoga for 15 years, teaching for about two years. She has been a massage therapist for eight years.

What is the workout? Yoga for Wellness is a yoga therapy class designed to teach students tools for healing and improving health, including injury recovery, rehab, chronic pain management and achieving peace of mind. Each class has a different focus, such as how to use yoga to heal lower-back pain. My class was about how to use yoga as a way to feel our "inner light" and combat depression in the winter.

The center has been offering this class for about two months.

What's different?

This class is more about healing and health than getting a good workout.

The Bodywork Bistro, a wellness center that offers massage, recently opened a third location and expanded to offer yoga and qigong classes, plus a health food cafe (with tea, locally sourced foods, raw foods, health tinctures). The center also offers a wide range of other resources, such as acupuncture and psychotherapy, all designed to contribute toward total health inside and out.

The center is now calling itself Boulder's first multidisciplinary wellness center, focused on preventative health care through the healing arts. The facility is not a spa or a medical facility. It emphasizes a variety of holistic approaches.

Yoga for Wellness is part of the Bodywork Bistro's overall vision -- just one tool to maintaining full body health.

"We're all focused around wellness. Even our class schedule, yoga and qigong and meditation, is all about how you can use these tools to keep your body healthy," says Jessica Van Antwerp, director of business development. "A lot of it is directly related to the rising costs of health care. Our idea is preventative wellness."

Classes are divided into different categories: strength, balance, evolution (of thinking and being). Yoga for Wellness is a balance class.

Cost: A one-time drop-in is $10. Different packages available to bring the price down.

Level: All levels, from people who have never done yoga before to competitive athletes. The class has plenty of personal attention. The class tends to attract "more average people than serious yoga people because of the health aspect," says Carey.

When: 1:15 p.m. Mondays for an hour.

What to prepare: Regular yoga clothes, a yoga mat if you have one (although all yoga equipment is provided). Bring water.

Muscles worked: Each class is different, but the class is full body. We did a lot of twisting in my class, which can help stave off illness. Twists are rejuvenating for the spine by freeing up space, Carey says.

"That allows cerebral fluid to flow better, which helps our nervous system to respond better," she says. "Also, with twists, we're squeezing the organs in our belly so you're actually giving our organs a massage, and this is where all of our immune system is. So when you're detoxifying and squeezing the belly, you help the body stay healthier and deal with diseases better."

What I loved: I have been really sick this winter (I blame it on my daughter's day care because kids are defenseless). I appreciate any ideas on how to strengthen my immune system to fight off illness, since my other strategies (snorting lines of Emergen-C) aren't working.

Beyond that, the mountain view from this yoga studio is surprising (in an office park) and breathtaking. Plus, imagine how great it would feel to grab a warm tea and a massage after a good yoga class. Better than a trip to the day spa.

Carey was also a very approachable and pleasant teacher. Everything she said sounded almost like she was singing it, and it was very soothing and peaceful. I mentioned it to her after class and found out she's also a musician. You don't say.

What I didn't like: I always get nervous leaving my purse and belongings in an unlocked cubby. This is standard in most yoga studios, and I recognize it would be karmic death to steal someone's wallet while they're zenning out on yoga. Still, I wish all yoga studios had readily available locking options for paranoid people like me.

How I felt after the class: I have maintained for years that I'm "not a yoga person." But maybe I am. I may just need to find the right class or studio. This one feels really good.

-- Reported by Aimee Heckel.

Know of any interesting workouts? Tell us about them so we can check them out: heckela@dailycamera.com or 303-473-1359.

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